What can you tell me about Joel Kinnaman from The Killing?
—Dutch Johnson, Dover, Del.
Kinnaman, who is best known in the U.S. for his role as Stephen Holder in the AMC series The Killing, has a whole string of credits in his native Sweden, including the Johan Falk miniseries, for which he was nominated in 2010 for the Guldbagge Award (the Swedish equivalent of the Oscar) for best supporting actor.
But it wasn’t until the Swedish thriller Easy Money went international that Kinnaman decided to try his hand in America, a fact made easier by the fact that the 32-year-old actor, who has five sisters, holds dual citizenship: His mother is Swedish and his father is American.
He met with immediate success here, landing a top-flight agent. Roles in the U.S. version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the thriller The Darkest Hour and the TV series The Killing soon followed.
Next up for the graduate of the prestigious Swedish Academic School of Drama is the title role in the remake of 1987’s Robocop. “I’m such a huge fan of the original,” he says. “I think I’ve seen the first Robocop 15 or 20 times.”
